If the corporate clients did not wish to use the gcc compiler that was being (hypothetically) shipped with ActivePerl, then they would simply ignore its presence and proceed with "business as normal".

Aaah but ..., would their security policies allow that? I know of (having worked for them) many corporates that simply wouldn't consider distributing a compiler--anyone's compiler--to their general purpose workstations. Full stop. It would not be allowed to happen.

So, unless AS produced two distributions, one with and one without, these corporates and government departments alike, would cease distributing Perl to workstations.

Likewise, even in their IT departments where the developers workstation image routinely incorporates development tools, distributing a second C compiler is likely to produce conflicts--libraries, header trees et al--and that could break their existing, carefully tested toolset. You doubt this? See Re: Re(2): Usage of tools for an example of the extremes many corporates go to ensure standardised toolsets. This is not uncommon.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

So, unless AS produced two distributions, one with and one without, these corporates and government departments alike, would cease distributing Perl to workstations

Ok ... I've now a better appreciation of where you're coming from. The smart thing for AS to do (assuming they can legally do this) is to therefore provide the two distributions, as you suggest. Those corporates/government bodies that freaked on distributing the compiler would simply distribute the non-compiler version. No problem for them ... and no problem for AS (that a little extra disk space won't fix).

That's far from the end of it. AS make their living by providing paid support for their distributions. What this would amount to is adding a completely new product line to their inventory, and for a small company, that's a distinctly non-trivial exercise.

They first need to ensure that they can support a GNU(?) licenced product?

Can they legally re-distribute it?

How does it affect their existing licencing agreements?

Is there any conflict between the licencing of GCC and the licencing of the other parts of the distribution?

Do they have the skills in house to support such an animal?

Strawberry Perl has a list of unresolved issues. If AS distributed a similar product, they would have to resolve those issues first. Especially if they are to expect to earn revenue from it by supporting it.

... ? (IANAL. Maybe some of these are non-issues. But I bet there is a lot more that my 30 seconds of thought haven't covered.)

Disk space is really the last consideration here.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

Ada Lovelace for the palindrome
Albert Einstein for having smelly feet
Alfred Nobel for his contribution to battlefield science
Burkhard Heim for providing the missing link between science and mysticism
Claude Shannnon for riding a unicycle at night at MIT
Donald Knuth for being such a great organist
Edward Teller for being the template for Dr. Strangelove
Edwin Hubble for pretending to be a pipe-smoking English gentleman
Erwin Schrödinger for cruelty to cats
Hedy Lamarr for weaponizing pianos
Hugh Everett for immortality, especially for cats
Isaac Newton for his occult studies
Kikunae Ikeda for discovering the secrets of soy sauce
Larry Wall for his website
Louis Camille Maillard for discovering why steaks taste good
Marie Curie for the shiny stuff
Nikola Tesla for the cool cars
Paul Dirac for speaking one word per hour when socializing
Richard Feynman for his bongo skills
Robert Oppenheimer for his in-depth knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita
Rusi P Taleyarkhan for Cold Fusion
Sigmund Freud for his Ménage ā trois
Theodor W Adorno for his contribution to the reception of jazz
Wilhelm Röntgen for the foundations of body scanners
Yulii Borisovich Khariton for the Tsar Bomba
Other (please explain why)